"You know why the story's always the same, 17 years gone? Because it only went down the one way," Marty says, moments before we see a series of events unfold that bears no resemblance to what he and Rust are describing in 2012.

So much of what Nic Pizzolatto is exploring in True Detective comes down to storytelling: the stories Rust and Marty tell Papania and Gilbough; the strange mythology of the Yellow King that's emerging in fragments; the stories Rust and Marty both use to get through the day. Marty tells himself a story in which he's a good husband and father who's trying to keep his family together; Rust tells himself a story in which nothing means anything and he therefore has nothing to lose.

When Marty executes Reggie Ledoux, overcome with rage after finding a dead boy and a catatonic girl imprisoned at his compound, Rust takes over straight afterwards to play storyteller, scattering gunfire and crafting a narrative to make this look like a legitimate killing. He has no qualms about covering it up - less even than Marty, who seems shell-shocked by what he's done once the violent urge passes - because Ledoux's death was justice. The details are just another story.

It's this same affinity for narrative that makes Rust so good at interrogation. "Everybody wants some cathartic narrative; the guilty especially," and he can tap into this universal vulnerability to wring a confession out of just about anybody. Unfortunately, the PCP murderer he works his magic on here has a counter-blow: Ledoux was a patsy, and the real killer is still at large. Rust and Marty believed their own cathartic narrative - the one where they got their man, the one that made them into local heroes and got Maggie to come around - and more victims have paid the price.

In 2012, Rust is once again weaving a very specific narrative for Gilbough and Papania; Marty has it right when he says that Rust is getting their number, not the other way around. For the first time in this episode, Rust's whole persona, his speechifying and his philosophical tangents, feel pointed - they feel like an act. He's performing the role of lunatic in that "fourth-dimensional perspective" speech, actually quoting the words of a lunatic (Ledoux) when he says that time is a flat circle.

Presumably, Rust has already figured out that they think he's been behind the killings all along, and he's playing up the act in the hopes that they'll reveal more of their evidence, which they do. What's harder to read is Marty's reaction to their suspicions - he's been vehemently supportive of Rust throughout the interview up to this point, but he definitely looks troubled. We don't know at this point whether he knows what Rust found at the Tuttle school, but the partnership is obviously getting close to its still-mysterious breaking point in 2002.

"Time is a flat circle," might be Ledoux's crazy ramblings as repurposed by Rust, but that doesn't make it meaningless - Marty's saying essentially the same thing in 2012 when he laments how time has slipped through his fingers, "like the future's behind you, and it's always been behind you." He's absolutely trapped in his pattern; he tells Maggie he's changed, but of course he's going to cheat on her again, and this is obvious not only because Marty is divorced by 2012.

When Audrey tells him that "women don't have to look like you want them to, Dad," it's such a loaded statement and it's almost impossible to unpack, because at this stage I still don't feel like I know anything about Audrey beyond these staccato hints Pizzolatto throws at us: naked dolls, explicit drawings, stealing her sister's crown.

But that scene ties back into both Maggie saying that girls learn about sex earlier than boys because they have to, and to the brothel owner telling Marty he "doesn't own it like he thought he did". He commits the same crime of inattention over and over again, not appreciating his family, not hearing their needs, not seeing his daughter's dysfunction. Until she does something that allows him to slot her into a category of woman that he understands: "slut".

So yeah, Marty has a long road to climb. As does Rust. As of 2012, they seemingly have the opportunity to redeem themselves, to not repeat their mistakes, to put right 17 years of wrong and break the circle of violence that they perpetuated. "This is a world where nothing is solved," Rust tells Gilbough and Papania, but let's hope - for the sake of both the characters and the audience - that he's wrong.

Rust Cohle's Inspirational Quote of the Week:
"Death created time, to grow the things that it would kill, and you are reborn, but into the same life that you've always been born into…. You can't remember your lives, you can't change your lives, and that is the terrible and secret fate of all life. You're trapped. Like a nightmare you keep waking up into."

Leads:
- I love it when Reggie Ledoux says, "Time is a flat circle," and Rust scoffs, "What is that, Nietzsche? Shut the f**k up!" Like, don't even try to quote nihilistic philosophy at me, bitch, I wrote the book on that.
- It sounded like Reggie said "He'll do this again" during his rambling right before Marty shot him. Did Rust pick up on that? If so, maybe he had a niggling suspicion that the killer was still out there even before 2002.
- So, before Rust can return to question him, the prisoner receives a phone call and kills himself in his cell, during which time two officers named Childress and Mahone were on duty.
- Rust is still suspicious about the task force who were so eager to take the case away from them in '95, and about Billy Lee Tuttle, who we learn died under seemingly suspicious circumstances in 2010. And his suspicions are confirmed when, in 2002, he visits the abandoned Tuttle school to find black stars on the walls and twig sculptures everywhere.
- "I don't like your face. It makes me wanna do things to it." Those sociopathic meth cooks don't mince their words.
- "Go to bed, this isn't about you!" Poor Maisie. I know Audrey had a bad week and everything, but she's so consistently shunted aside to make room for her sister's drama.
- I feel like Rust and Laurie would be an excruciatingly irritating couple to spend any time with. That single line she got about Rust being "conflict-oriented" was enough of a clue into their dynamic.
- Rust and Marty's impressively consistent lies about how the shootout went down in 2012 gave rise to possibly my favourite True Detective gif of all. Heavy s**t.